The Cleaner
We’ve all been there. It’s been a taxing day in the dungeon, and you’re ready for your richly-deserved hero’s welcome back in town. So naturally, when you rock up to the Thorpeshireville gates only to get an earful about some local tax on horseshoes, you react poorly. Maybe the local customs official is an unreasonable sort. Maybe you gave him too much of a love tap. Now you’ve got a body on your hands, and you can hear the local constabulary about to round the corner. It’s moments like these that separate the career criminals from the petty thugs.
Whether you’re a highly skilled contract killer or (like Barbarian) an overenthusiastic barroom brawler, it pays to know how to handle a cleanup. This is where your Disguise checks and Bluff checks will come into play. Access to sculpt corpse or similar evidence disposal methods can also go a long way. A certain knowledge of modern policing helps, so it’s oftentimes expedient to remove your victim’s jawbone. If you’re high enough level, you can opt to flashy thing the witnesses, and if you’re rich enough or noble enough you can usually get away with bribery. But no matter how poor you are, there’s always the classic “Plan B” of arson. Nothing covers your tracks quite like cleansing flames!
The thing is, none of these methods are foolproof. An enterprising sleuth might find the jawbone. A witness might ace their flashy-thing save. A signet ring might escape the inferno. In all of these cases, it behooves a good murderhobo to grin and bear it when the voice of God comes down with a, “Stop right there criminal scum!” Breaking in-game law has in-game consequences, and even the best-laid plans will often etc. etc. All you can do is play the odds, and try to be clever enough to get away with it.
So in the interest of stacking those odds in our favor, what do you say we spend today’s discussion sharing tips and tricks for hiding in-game evidence? When the jig is up and you’re about to be discovered, how do you divert blame? What trump cards do you play? Let’s hear all about your best criminal cover-ups down in the comments!
ADD SOME NSFW TO YOUR FANTASY! If you’ve ever been curious about that Handbook of Erotic Fantasy banner down at the bottom of the page, then you should check out the “Quest Giver” reward level over on The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. Twice a month you’ll get to see what the Handbook cast get up to when the lights go out. Adults only, 18+ years of age, etc. etc.
My top trick for avoiding arrest is, if violence isn’t solving your problem, you are not using enough violence, that coupled with “no-one can know if there’s no-one TO know” basically murder everyone
This is a better plan at low level than high level.
Also, there ought to be an “anti adventurer task force” in every city watch. It’s like a SWAT team for murderhobos, and I kind of want to play in hat campaign.
One of the campaigns I ran was literally that. The desperate, deranged, or marked for death signed onto the Troubleshooters, a guild that solved adventurer-caused issues by lobbing more adventurers at it. You can imagine how well that went.
The phrase “suicide squad” springs to minds. I imagine that’s what you call the GMs who try to run such madness.
It had some great moments.
Player 1: “WHO IN THE 9 HELLS TAKES A BASILISK ON A WALK DOWN THE WATERFRONT WITHOUT BLINDERS?!”
Player 2: sheepishly raises hand “My wizard in the other group last week…”
If most cities were equipped to deal with adventurers, they wouldn’t be hiring adventurers.
Instead I assume that there’s a group of adventurers who left sending stones with every guard captain whose job is to remove adventurers who pose a threat.
If you act like murderhobos, high level adventurers will descend on you as you are now the villain in their story.
I like to think major cities actually do have this – in a way. Specifically, settlements that offer high-level spellcasting services probably have an agreement to provide those to the city. A caster with 7th-9th level spells focused on supporting the city could cause a whole lot of grief for a group, even if it’s just by using divination to discover whodunnit.
When I played We Be Goblins, this was my job. My GM let me make my on custom goblin so I became a ravenous Feral Gnasher who just ate everything and everyone. Because I was a barbaric goblin who rages a lot, my downtime is spent filling my insatiable appetite, typically by eating the dead. I could stripe the flesh and organs off a single humanoid corpse in five minutes, and in thirty I can chew up all of the bones too. It’s faster if I have other gobs helping me.
Eating the evidence is solid, if unhygienic plan.
Between mending and prestidigitation, you can hide almost any crime scene. Just looted a place, mending and prestidigitation can clean up and fix the damages. Covered in blood and and you clothing is all messed up, prestidigitation and mending can get you cleaned up for that meeting with the general in no time. Got a general to kill, but dont want anyone to know about his death for hours after, mend his wounds closed now that he’s a inanimate object, get rid of that blood, viscera, excretions, and smell, and put some color and warmth back into that corpse, before convincing his butler he just had a bit much to drink to help with the fact that hes been overstressed lately, and tuck him neatly into his bed, to be undisturbed for half a day.
Works better in 5e than Pathfinder due to the weight limit in Pathfinder mending, but both have that obnoxious casting time. Lingering around the crime scene long enough to tidy via multiple castings activates my “random encounter” senses like whoa.
All that said, if you aren’t dealing with time crunch then this method is golden. Way to keep the cantrips relevant!
Animate dead, and a really good Bluff roll. Admittedly, this didn’t work (something about “not enough natural 20s in the world”), but it was fun.
But there’s precedent!
https://is4-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Video19/v4/b1/2a/d1/b12ad1e1-7c36-f97c-46d5-e15f7d09cee6/pr_source.lsr/268x0w.png
That’s how bards roll!
Unrelated, I once played in an all-bard game. We were “the Knights of the Queen”, led by the dashing hero Sir Freddie Quick the Silver. You can probably guess how that campaign went.
Questgiver: “I see a little silhouetto of a man…”
Obviously, the pathfinder character most likely to ‘get away with murder’ would probably the ones with the dual identity (such as the vigilante). Just let all the blame fall onto your vigilante persona. Afterwards, just change into your alter ego and never return to it (and when you get the time acquire a new persona, ditching the old one completely). Any evidence will be tied to your vigilante persona which will inevitability turn the investigation into a cold-case.
Remind me of the “acquiring a new vigilante identity” rules. I can’t recall, and I now want to be my own justice league.
Besides the variety of social talents that grant additional alter egos, such as Many Guises, I see no reason why you couldn’t utilize the retraining rules to swap your vigilante identity with a new one.
Although if I am being completely honest, I was thinking of the troubadour class which explicitly states that it “can permanently change one of his personas into a completely different persona, but doing so requires 5 days of work.”
One trick which can be used with relatively little preparation time, is to quickly summon a monster and start fighting with it just before the witnesses arrive on the scene.
Then afterwards you can use bluff to sell the story that you, a brave adventurer, sadly arrived just moments too late to save the poor innocent victim from this dastardly monster attack, and for no more reward than the right to keep the villain’s personal treasure you are going to hunt them down to prevent whatever dastardly plot this was part of.
Given how often this happens for real, that shouldn’t be that hard to convince people of, at least if you committed your crime someplace you would be allowed to be if it wasn’t for the murder/someplace you could easily and quickly enter after having spotted the attack from someplace you are allowed to be.
Also remember to summon a monster that leave similar wounds to the ones you inflicted.
Clever! What do you do about the monster disappearing after X rounds though?
You say “a summoned monster! Hmmm, there must be a spellcaster behind it.
I suspect a demonic/diabolic cult/a mad wizard.” Pick a group that the ones you want to deceive are predisposed to dislike.
Ideally you want to kill them before the duration run out, so that they can’t figure that the duration is too long to be reasonable, but that’s a minor detail that’s really only important for very observant people with spellcraft.
So I have a few stories of dealing with inconvenient corpses. I’ll sprinkle them throughout the comments to prevent a wall of text.
One time we were working on behalf of one country in another, so we were supposed to try and not start an international incident. We ended up with some dead soldiers. Our solution? Stab some Goblin arrows into them so they would assume it was the Gobs who did it.
CSI Faerun: The case of the stablins.
BTW, I seem to remember someone suggesting this comic. Was that you?
It was me Austin! It was me all along!
First comment here: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/toilet-humor
I’m sure it’s a good sign when the heroes are committing false-flag terrorism.
Never let it be said that the Handbook ignores the voice of the people. 😀
You still haven’t made the comic aboot how Questgiver and Sharkoom the Titanslayer are just lazy assholes whose presence cripples the plot.
You’ll have to explain your thinking on that one.
I posted this before, but the internet ate it, let’s try again.
Caption: If qualified people solved all the problems, we wouldn’t need you.
Questgiver, Sharkoom, Spymaster, and Archbishop are sitting in Sharkoom’s shop getting krunk and playing cards. Out the window we see a party fighting against a horde of demons.
Quest Giver: “…so I teleport over to congratulate them on slaying the dragon…”
Spymaster: “And all but one of them are dead?”
QG: “…But of course! Two of them actually died to the swamp I didn’t bother teleporting them across!”
All: Laughter
Archbishop: “How many of those is an average encounter for us?”
Sharkoom: “6.”
All: Laughs even harder.
I didn’t realize it was a pattern of behavior, but now that I think about it? In more than one campaign, when we were backed in a corner and had no other options, my friends and I have fallen back on the idea that no one questions a messiah. So, as long as you have a less-than-lawful cleric and a decent charisma score, you can forge God’s signature on a lot of Get Out Of Jail Free cards.
No one questions a messiah? I beg to differ:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kx_G2a2hL6U
Removing the jaw is good idea, if you burn it and crush it into dust to throw into the fields, i will also crush the skull just in case, disintegration can destroy bodies, just ask Lord Kubota. Misdirection is a good idea in this case. Help a monster just killed Lord Dude III!!! Once in Godbound while playing a Deception godbound i killed some noble, his court and guard then enter the room with only my pc and the noble on it. What i did? Just blame the guard captain, they buy it. Obviously the guy who have been with them the whole time is just an illusion and he just dispelled it when the noble was dead and all the people has enter into the room, so he could blame his betrayal into a loyal subject of his late majesty. So many of my options have been already taken for other. I don’t think the Skyrim method has been taken into account. Use some spell to make the person attack you, then it is not murder is legitime defense, the town guard will even help you if not kill your victim outright. Phantasmal Killer is also good, the victim dies of fear so no wound and just a heart attack. Also once the party my group was playing have got some problems with the guard, they resolve them by creating good will with them by making and giving the guard for free “Guard’s stew”. Make with the best natural ingredients, one hundred percent healthy, guards disappearing from town not related. I love this question so many funny memories coming to me.
I felt sure the Skyrim method would be “put a bucket on their head.” I’m disappointed.
Well, you can use a bucket to kill somebody and then use the same bucket to hide the corpse. Um… i will need to be a really tiny corpse. Hey where is gunslinger when you need him? I have this theory i want to test and his help will be appreciated 🙂
If you killed someone important to be resurrected or reincarnated… an idea would be to get your Necromancer buddy to animate that corpse and send it to dump itself in the ocean or something. Probably would be too messy or risky to do it yourself.
With some proper timing and finesse, you can patch the zombie up and have it walk out of town on its own before disappearing, making sure it’s seen by a few people.
Or, for the particularly charismatic of criminals, you could Disguise Self into that annoying guy who bumped into you that one time. Then murder the zombie in public while he’s off somewhere without an alibi!
Of course, all this stuff is probably somewhat common in the fantasy setting you’re playing in… so whatever you do, it’s probably been done before, one way or another. Just like fantasy criminals have more ways to commit crimes, fantasy cops have more ways to uncover them. It’s still quite a struggle for both of sides, which keeps it interesting!
You can’t rez the undead, right? That zombie in the ocean thing is a great idea! Just have to make sure that it’s properly weighted down is all. You don’t want a floater!
Last time we had to “hide evidence” (they were smuggling weapons and attacked us first, totally justified!) I used the Shape Water cantrip to sink a few bodies in the local river. AFAIK they were never found. Unfortunately while our Rogue rolled really well on his check to forge a note and implicate someone we didn’t like, the local governments intelligence officer coughheadofthethievesguildunconvincing-cough rolled even better on their detect forgery roll.
We weren’t blamed (that’s good!) because unfortunately the policia were blaming a local gnoll tribe that we really didn’t want them to start a war with (that’s bad!) because there was a bigger bad (lich-emperor came back from the dead…you get what I mean) on the horizon (that’s really bad!!!!). Luckily there was an assassination attempt (not by us!) that we were able to prevent and earn some instant brownie points and divert attention.
So I guess what I’m saying is, don’t start shit unless there’s someone else you can pawn your fuck-ups off on.
Setting up a frame job… Not a bad idea! Last time we tried that mess however, we forgot that dragons have a good sense of smell. Big Red didn’t believe for a second that his duergar servants had pulled an inside job, and we nearly got roasted!
So I guess what I’m saying is to ask for a “common sense roll” every once in a while, just to make sure you don’t miss something that the GM thinks is obvious.
That’s interesting- having to deal with a sense that that players don’t normally have (or think about). I feel that in a world with all kinds of magic and supernatural abilities, that sort of thing should come up a lot more, and I’m not just talking about diviniations and Speak with Dead- how hard would it be for the GM to pull a Terry Pratchet and start having the town guards recruit a few werewolves?
Well if you can get the body somewhere out of sight for a few minutes that has access to a sewer or river or such you could always repeatedly cast damaging cantrips on it and sweep/wash away the messy remainder (or if lacking such a convenient gore/slime/ash disposal method just clean it away with Prestidigitation). Acid Splash would probably be best, as we know it dissolves bones since skeletons aren’t immune to acid damage.
Though I think I’ve only been in the circumstance once in a game where we care about being identified as the people who committed the crime. In that case our victims were also the only witnesses who would have a reason to believe we were even there in the first place so we just cast invisibility on everyone and ran for a few blocks.
(I’m not counting Shadowrun games since when you kill some yakuza or corp goons whose bosses will deny any event ever occurred to every outside organization, it kind of doesn’t matter if you dispose of the bodies or not a lot of the time. And that assumes you’re even able to make anything resembling a clean get-away in the first place, which is by no means something you should be counting on.)
Cover-up? Nah, when I perform Evil actions, it’s always with a lot of witnesses. Slaughtering entire civilizations, defiling their sites of worship, and taking everything of worth with me. In the end, I even get praised for it by my peers and the local civilians for it.
…Granted, I try to pick appropriate targets. Who knew you can get away with incredible evil if you perform it on bandits, invading orc tribes and monstrous cults?
My favorite example of dealing with an inconvenient corpse was “Well, the ship is sinking, this problem will solve itself.”
It surprises me that in my long career of roguing, I have not developed a lot of body hiding tactics besides the frame-job. Though, that one time I did cross-class wizard, Shrink Item (Sorceror/Wizard 3) came in handy. It’s not permanent, but by the time it wears off you should have set up a proper frame-job or hidden the body in a river or hole. Bonus points if you feed it to the Druid’s Animal Companion when they aren’t looking.
Because if I go murderous rogue I tend to skip the inbetweens and go assassin in theme if not class. That means I often want my victims to be found so that I can get paid. That being said, in Shadowrun, never forget the fun of scattering a few gangers near your run to throw off pursuit.
So I realize this has nothing to do with the comic at hand, but I know you, Colin Stricklin, have been a PC in Curse of Strahd. Behold one of my finest moments as a DM. Just happened like an hour ago, and I’m giddy to share.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?579196-One-of-my-finest-moments-as-a-DM-Unmarked-Curse-of-Strahd-Spoilers!
So we were interrogating a guy on our airship, when his magical tattoo made his head explode. We realized that people didn’t know he was dead, and one of us had a hat of disguise. I was a Druid with the Call Lightning spell, so we made a plan to stage his “Accidental” “Death”. Our disguised associate would go to the dead guy’s ship disguised as the dead guy. I would then strike him with lightning just as he teleporked away leaving behind only some charred shoes, making the superstitious sailors think he was disintegrated by the lightning strike.
Weell… in a Traveller PbP game I’m playing a Vargr (think humanoid canine) in, their superior sense of smell but inferior colour vision came into play a few times.
On one occasion, the Vargr just could not pin down the particular shade of red a villain’s getaway car had (It was red, what more do you want from me?!’), but just right about now it turns out that burying human corpses in a barn fully of stinky livestock isn’t good enough to fool a canine nose.
Sadly, my only familiarity with the Vargr comes via Slough Feg:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hH26F6kvhUY
Ima need to find me a Traveller game one day. It always sounds epic.
A sense of smell is one of those abilities that is weirdly better than its mechanics. “You may detect invisible dudes” or whatever the rules happen to say gives way to an entire new way of seeing the world, and that comes up in all manner of situations. Nicely done!
Poor Paladin, travelling with this woman really can’t be good for his rap sheet, I wonder how he still keeps that halo so shiny?
Or… wait… maybe there’s a reason he’s hiding it behind the text banner!